Those were the days...

At the end of the '60s thousand of people left their American and European home to follow the so-called hippie trail, the spiritual and geographical road towards East, in particular Afghanistan, India and Nepal. There they searched for (and often found) a new, less materialistic and consumistic way of life, breath-taking landscapes, spiritual guides and teachers and, yes, a lot of cheap and first-class drugs. They traveled on foot, by cars and by the Magic Bus, an alternative line of buses that left from London or Amsterdam and through Istanbul and Kabul reached Delhi. In Istanbul the freaks congregated in the 'Pudding Shop' in Sultan Ahmed bazaar, where travelers coming from India and those going there exchanged infos and useful addresses on a big panel. Then some of them made long halts in Kabul, a magical, peaceful place (incredible, eh?) where the hippies were warmly welcomed and even custom officers and policemen willingly shared water pipes full of the best 'mazar-i-sharif' hash. But the main destination were India - Benares, Manali, Goa and thousand of other legendary place - and Nepal. Together with Goa, Kathmandu became one of the hippie capitals of the world, a fairy, medieval place where informal travellers mingle in the 'Freak street', listened for Hendrix or The Doors in the 'Blue Tibetan' club and bought the best qualities of hash and ganja - one for all: the 'temple balls' -in the Eden Hashish Center. One of the photos shows the legendary Eddie'Eight Fingers', a well known hero of those roaring times in Kathmandu (and later in Goa, where he still lives.) The 'magic moment' lasted few years, then slowly faded away due to many known reasons. The 'hippie trail' ended in when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, making impossible and not quite advisable to visit that country and forever interrupting the trail itself....